Genrify Your Catalog Not Your Collection

This is a topic I have talked about for years. It is a service to readers issue and an EDI issue. Back in 2019 I first bought this up in response to a question from a library worker about sticking books to identify diverse authors. 

In that post, I wrote about how we should not use our physical spaces to separate books. Ideally, we want to have all of our fiction shelved together and then we can use our catalogs to help people who are looking for a specific genre or identity. Again, click here for the nuanced argument. 

But here's the thing, when we don't put books into categories on the shelves, more readers may find a book they never would have found if it had a sticker or was on a genre specific shelf. When we give them more options without labels, they are more willing to think all of the books are for them. And because our catalogs are easier to navigate, we can add tags for those looking for specific genres or identities or even appeal factors (my library uses NoveList Select for some of this data).

We see this a lot in speculative genres. Many SF, Fantasy, and Horror titles have more cross over appeal than readers who do not identity as speculative readers may think they do. When we give them a title like The Devil Take You Home by Gabino Iglesias and tell them it is a Thriller in the vein of S.A. Cosby, they love it. But when you put a "Horror" sticker on it, they won't touch it. I use this Iglesias title as an example because it is showing up on just about every major Crime Fiction/Thriller year end best list as well as most Horror ones. It gets coms to Cosby, rightfully so, but there is some supernatural Horror in it.

As much as I have confidence in my own opinions, like the good librarian I am, I also am always seeking resources to back up my opinions. [I also am equally on the hunt for resources that challenge me to think differently. For some background here, back in my early librarian days, I was 100% for genre sections, but my thinking has evolved over the years.]

Last week I saw this article entitled, "Genrify your Catalog, not your Collection!," in a few places. It provides another opinion to be paired with my 2019 post. It is short and well stated. I think everyone could get behind it. 

Even if you disagree, and love your genre sections, please use an EDI lens to think about how stickers and sections hurt those from marginalized perspectives the most. To make a difference, we need to be actively fighting systemic oppression by changing out practices, especially when someone points out how something we thought was helping, might be unknowingly upholding systemic oppression.

Some of you might feel uncomfortable with either piece linked in this post, but first, I get it, I was totally uncomfortable when someone first pointed out to me the problems with genre sections, and second, big changes can't happen until we feel uncomfortable and then us that discomfort to drive real change.